Thursday, November 3, 2016

In kidney exchange, surgeons (and even economists) are important, but transplant coordinators are the hidden heroes and heroines. Here's a poem by the Mexican poet Marisol Robles (who last week received a kidney in a global kidney exchange chain organized by the Alliance for Paired Donation) in honor of Susan Rees, the APD's transplant coordinator. The Spanish poem is translated by her husband Cuauhtémoc.

La maga de riñones, by Marisol Robles

You can follow Marisol Robles on her blog Diario de la sed (Diary of thirst), which recounts her progress. (Google translate does a pretty good job on most of her posts...Kidney patients on dialysis are thirsty, since they have to time their drinking to their dialysis sessions...)

P.S. Susan Rees, the nurse transplant coordinator celebrated in the poem, is also the wife of Mike Rees, the founder of the APD, who organized the very first non-simultaneous kidney exchange chain.